Saturday, June 25, 2011

So jet lagged. Today we woke up at 7 am, so really its 1 am back in the States. I know I should stop thinking like that if I ever want to get on Italian time! On today’s itinerary we had a private car tour of the Amalfi coast. Our driver was pretty much your stereotypical Italian middle age man named Francisco. Think slicked back salt and pepper hair starting to bald, form fitting black Italian suit, white dress shirt with the top three buttons undone and some chest hair poking out… I think you get the picture. Anyways lucky for us Francisco’s English was decent, but after five minutes in the car I started to realize he said the phrase “Ya know” a lot. Then I started to listen closer and keep track of how many times he dropped the phrase. I was up to 13 in the first minute then I lost track. I mean after everything… “How was your lunch? Ya know?” “And to the left is a first class hotel. Ya know...” “Great position… Ya know?” So needless to say the phrase “ya know” has been our little joke.

Houses built into the hill

Cute little beach town I can't remember the name

Wow

We left Sorrento and stopped at a couple of little beach towns. In a strange way it reminded me of a less trashy version of Jersey Shore. There were lots of young Italians walking around on the beach. Mom asked Francisco if we could go to a little town outside of the tour area called Vetri. For those who aren’t familiar there is a pottery company whose name sake is this little town and apparently they are big in the US. Mom went a little crazy with the pottery getting some ridiculous number of plates. Personally I don’t know why, the design just look like some kindergarten painted a chicken but that’s just me. However in her defense she got this pattern when she lived in Italy 20 years ago and some of her plates have chipped so she wanted to replace them. Below are some pictures, eventually I will upload all my pictures to flicker but until then…